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Monthly Archives: September 2009

I watched the media’s reaction to concerned parents objecting a planned address by President Obama to the children of the nation. Very few seemed to understand that the issue was not just that a president was making a speech to kids. Most pundits completely missed the point. This was not just partisanship billowing up from the bitter clingers out in flyover country.

Allow me to explain. One of the failings of the liberal press and its fellow travelers is that for them, history started this morning. Those of us who have a memory longer than the last news cycle recall the creepy cult of personality that sprung up around Obama and continues largely undiminished among true believers. Americans reared with more traditional notions of the relationship between citizen and nation recoil in horror at videos where celebrities pledge to serve the president.

The Obama campaign allowed or nurtured a messianic bubble around their candidate where all the hopes and dreams of the people in that inner circle of devotees were poured into the man. Consider the online video where an Obama acolyte has people chanting “President Barack Obama” like a New Age mantra to the camera while Randy Rothwell’s “Sanctuary” plays as the soundtrack. This song calls on God to prepare the heart of the believer to receive the Spirit of God. It is almost impossible for me to adequately express how profoundly awful it is to see a worship song used in this fashion. Blasphemy still fails to play in Peoria.

I do not necessarily blame the President for weirdness on the part of his supporters. I do blame him for the weirdness of those on his payroll. While the President’s speech may prove innocuous, the lesson plan fronted by the White House included such things as asking kids to meditate on how they could “help the President”. Not their family, school, or community, but the President. Coupled with an invitation to read the President’s books and other touchstones of “dear leader-ism” and you can see why we who have not yet drunk the Kool-Aid vigorously object.

Though now withdrawn, given that somewhere north of 90% of education establishment is part of Obama’s cult of personality I believe that many teachers and school administrators will indulge the administration in doing their part to chip away at what is left of individualism. The very fact that someone in the White House read that lesson plan and saw that it was good tells me that they are paddling their canoe toward a place where leaders are venerated at the expense of the individual.

Bottom line, I don’t think that parents freaked out over an address by the President, it really was a freak out over an address by this President given the backdrop of his cultish campaign and the behavior in which his administration engages. Not because he is a Democrat, but because the presidency seems to be all about him. Frankly I am encouraged that so many citizens objected.

Jacked-up creepy-freakin’ “Sanctuary” video:

Bizzarre, weird, pompous, self-important “Pledge to be a Servant” video: